Welcome to the Kutz Research Group

We are an interdisciplinary group with the underlying goal of understanding the health of free-living wildlife and applying that knowledge for the purposes of sustainable subsistence use and conservation of healthy ecosystems. The main body of our work focuses on understanding the impacts of environmental perturbations (e.g., climate change and habitat disturbance) on animal health. We engage directly with subsistence hunters and northern communities to identify emerging concerns and to develop and implement practical and effective disease surveillance methodologies. We use field, laboratory, and captive animal studies together with local knowledge and observations to document parasite biodiversity, understand disease dynamics, and develop empirically-based models to predict transmission dynamics under changing environmental conditions. 

Core to all of our activities is collaboration starting with the individual subsistence hunter and communities through to the wildlife management and conservation agencies. We believe strongly in knowledge translation and return to the community and all of our activities include components of community outreach.